Kagi/Esellerate/Other?

[diordna]

I know there was a topic on this somewhere, but I think it got deleted with the "new" iDG.

So, can anyone tell me what percentage Kagi takes out of sales? I know eSellerate is 10% for what I have.

Oh, and what are your opinions on both?

[aarku]

Don't forget about BMTMicro -- I think danlab uses that. It at least looks really slick.

-Jon

[skyhawk]

I am currently trying out esellerate.... I've tried kagi in the past, but I can't tell you how good it was since I didn't get ONE SALE. *shrugs*
that being said, esellerate has pretty good customer service. I signed up, and within 2 minutes I got a half personalized email. After that, I sent a reply to that email, and got an entirely personalized email. So, I expect you to find good customer support from esellerate

[funkboy]

I have real good luck with Kagi, especially since it supports so many different languages.

For products under $25, Kagi's fee is 5% + US$ 1.25.
For products over $25, it's 10%.

So, for my $15 KGA Golf, I get $13 in my pocket.

I'm sticking with Kagi for now simply because I already have an account, and their service is good enough for me. PayPal takes a very small cut, only about $0.75, so I end up getting $14.25 in my pocket. I think eSellerate takes less cut than Kagi, too.

[Jake]

Esellerate takes 10% no matter what.

[skyhawk]

unless you manage to sell in really big volumes ;)

[Jake]

unless you manage to sell in really big volumes ;)

Then what does it change to? I always thought it was 10%, and what is high volume, because I have made over 1500 bucks this month

(Which reminds me Carlos, you have been doing lots of work lately :)

[FCCovett]

I think eSellerate charges 10% until you reach $10,000/year in sales. Then, it goes up to 15% and then down again in brackets.

I am really satisfied with eSellerate, both from the tech support and financial ends. Their application built-in purchashing system works very well and it just got better. Check out the last updates.

Danlab uses BMT Micro, which seems to work better than eSellerate (from the customer's perspective) for web-site purchases, but they do not offer an application built-in solution. Also, you'll need to devise your own registration and serial numbers system for your game. With eSellerate, it's already there for you.

[ERaZer]

Yeah, eSellerate has pretty darn good support and everything more or less already fixed for you.

[diordna]

Hmm...I'm in METAL right now so I can't use the eSellerate SDK, but their price is the lowest. I'm planning on making Canvas Wars $10 shareware (v2 coming out soon), and BMT Micro's minimum is $1.25, so there's an extra quarter if I use eSellerate, but i really don't care. I don't really want to use Kagi.

So at this point it's really a coin toss, isn't it :)

[KenD]

What I would be interested in knowing is how does using your own mecrhant service compare to Kagi, eSellerate, etc?
Most web hosting services offer an online merchant service too so you can set up your own online store. I have not really had time to look into this so I can't say at what numbers it might be a better solution. Does anybody know?

KenD

[skyhawk]

well, esellerate does offer you a serial SDK...
using your own concoction requires you to write your own serial checking

[FCCovett]

And if you write your own, then you need to make sure it contacts your server via a secure and encrypted connection, on top of gathering hardware info from the user, to validate the serial number/hardware combo. It is very time consuming to come up with your own solution, and most likely it'll be more less safe than what eSellerate offers.

It is really not recommended that you generate serial numbers from within your applications. It's fairly easy for an amateur hacker with some knowledge of assembly to reverse-engineer your serial generation and validation code. It happens more often than you'd think.

[FCCovett]

You could set up a bank account and a merchant account, but there is a monthly cost associated with that option that can eat up your profit, especially if you just sell a few units per month.

[diordna]

I can't really gather hardware info in METAL.

And you're sure I can't come up with a super dooper dee pooper serial number generation code tidbit that would take a year to crack? Take the user's name and computer serial number, multiply the ASCII values by 13.5, divide by pi, add the square root of 2 and make the final output the letter values of weirdoNumber+96, with all the letters switched around? Anyway, I don't really care about piracy. If they can't get the serial generator then they'll swap license files, unless I store copies of license files in multiple locations, some invisible.

[FCCovett]

I am quite sure you can't. Others who are at least 10 years more experienced than you have tried and failed, not to mention the others who are 20 years more experienced. :)

Swapping license files alone won't work if the computer must contact a secure server to activate the serial for its specific hardware info. This method is not infallible, of course, but it makes bypassing the security measures a lot harder.

[Jake]

And you're sure I can't come up with a super dooper dee pooper serial number generation code tidbit that would take a year to crack? Take the user's name and computer serial number, multiply the ASCII values by 13.5, divide by pi, add the square root of 2 and make the final output the letter values of weirdoNumber+9

All you have to do is look at the assembly code to see what your doing, trust me, it can be hacked, there was a doom 3 serial generator out days before it was released.

[IBethune]

And you're sure I can't come up with a super dooper dee pooper serial number generation code tidbit that would take a year to crack? Take the user's name and computer serial number, multiply the ASCII values by 13.5, divide by pi, add the square root of 2 and make the final output the letter values of weirdoNumber+96, with all the letters switched around? Anyway, I don't really care about piracy. If they can't get the serial generator then they'll swap license files, unless I store copies of license files in multiple locations, some invisible.

He's being sarcastic...

- Iain